Elevating scenario-based learning through Virtual Reality immersive wall suites

On 10 June 2025, myself, Cherylene Camps, Senior Lecturer in Paramedicine and Godson Uma, Digital Curriculum Support and Developer delivered the session 'Elevating scenario-based learning through Virtual Reality immersive wall suites', to NTU colleagues for the School of Social Sciences Showcase 2025 Day 2.  The session was well-received and created much rich discussion and ideas.  The two students who recently qualified from their BSc paramedicine course, that shared their experiences was a particular standout - so I am glad that I suggested this so the audience could hear their views directly and better represent their perspectives.  Our presentation is below.

NTU researcher - "#belonging at the NTU Social Sciences Showcase today.  Privileged to see the incredible work on...and the innovative VR development from Daniel Scott-Purdy and his team."

Senior Lecturer, Course Lead for the BA (Hons) Childhood and Education Studies (online) top-up degree, Nottingham Institute of Education - "I am so impressed by the incredible work you are engaged in and would be keen to learn more.  During the 2024/25 School Showcase event, I had the great pleasure of chairing a session led by Daniel Scott-Purdy and colleagues from IHAP.  The session (focused on immersive learning) was brought to life through some outstanding examples and brief demonstrations of how the immersion suite works in practice.  It was further enhanced through the contributions by students who had used the suite for practical exercises.  The team were passionate about this work and it was evident the students and staff had gained a great deal from this exciting learning resource facilitated through a team of experienced development staff who had bought the practical exercises to life.  A quintessential feature of the presentation was the teams recognition of areas for growth in the use of these resources.  The excitement, enthusiasm and expert knowledge of digital learning resources was bought to life by a team who are evidently hyper-focused on how we can work smarter through the use of digital technologies.  There are a wealth of opportunities for using such resources across different programmes and Daniel was gracious (both in the presentation and afterwards) in discussing ways in which the Childhood team might employ such tools." 

Head of Department - "A fantastic representation of IHAP, capturing the diversity and innovation of practice, scholarship and research." 

 

School Employability Manager - "Students are not only able to apply theory to practice but develop a plethora of valuable skills including real life problem solving, decision making, analytical judgement, teamwork and time critical management skills. These are highly desired by a whole host of graduate recruiters'". 

Principal Lecturer, Postgraduate and Continuing Professional Development - "Feedback from formal teaching observation highlighted the strong impact of using immersive technology in teaching “...a safe and supportive environment where students felt comfortable engaging with sensitive and potentially distressing material... approach develops resilience and emotional intelligence, which are key attributes for future paramedics who will inevitably face challenging situations in practice.”"

EDIT:  September 2025.  The School of Social Sciences Employability Manager was in the audience, and they contacted us to say that our work is ideal to be submitted for the Academic Employability Awards 2026, and they would support us to put it forward.  The award puts a spotlight on and celebrates innovative practice and inspire colleagues across the sector.

In November 2025, I met with the Cherylene and the Principal Lecturer in paramedicine to discuss the submission.  Here is a brief explanation of the work I supplied to help bring into some context and support the submission.

"The IHAP VR immersive suites, a curriculum-specific facility, enables lecturers to recreate immersive and realistic virtual reality 360° viewing and simulation, role play and scenario-based learning experiences.  These suites are new to many of our academics, new to teaching and/or coming straight from clinical practice and technicians.  Who have varying degrees of digital capabilities using learning technologies.  Overall, there is not large uptake of the VR immersive suites across many of our courses. For many specific reasons I can list if required (got the data).  By way of progressing application and further integrating and scale these suites across our curriculum areas, and to address the strategic ambitions set out by the NHS on Extended Reality and simulation.  Cherylene has been a key stakeholder to me as an active early adopter of these immersive spaces.  We have a mutual admiration and passion for immersive learning and the supporting technologies.  Therefore we started to join forces and collaborate to create the best student experiences possible, with recreating realistic scenarios provided by Cherylene, and me and Godson assisted in creating supporting multimedia to immerse students into those recreated realities.  All of which later led to an opportunity to work with Cherylene on modelling her use of these suites through the promotional video: Tech Teaser: VR Immersive Wall.

Attached is our presentation on 10 June 2025, at the School of Social Sciences Showcase 2025 Day 2.  Providing more detail on our work and future plans (that includes other pics and student feedback), also attached is submission text and a pic of Cherylene.  In my opinion, the session was well-received and created much rich discussion and ideas.  The two students who recently qualified from their BSc paramedicine course, that shared their experiences was a particular standout – I am glad that I suggested this so the audience could hear their views directly and better represent their perspectives.  The session received the pieces of feedback below (hopefully aspects of these can be used for the team project aspect), and the recent nod from Angela Vesey endorsing submission for the Academic Employability Awards 2026."

Reviewing a bit of immersive education literature

This is my output of a formative assessment for my Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE).  Review of 2 research papers, well book chapters in my case.  Following my teaching observation in April and teaching philosophy in January.

I realise I am a bit over the word count, which was set at 1200 words, but that is because I put a lot of time and effort into reading the chapters to be better informed, which was the primary learning objective for myself, and I wanted this to be a source of information for later use.  There was further potential for criticality and synthesising but I had to stop somewhere, it's only for a formative assessment.  However, it meant there's more appetite for further reading and potentially leading my own research in this area of my practice.

I received the following overall feedback.

"Daniel, this is excellent.  You’ve taken a topic that is current to the sector, relevant to your school, and challenging!  It’s a very impressive response.

Strengths

• The criticality you offer is excellence, speaking to the limitations of the articles not only in what they offer but sensitively to the context of your practice.
• The use of extended literature is something that you will be able to draw upon in your future assignments, including the written submission and professional conversation.

Areas for development

• You’ve already identified your biggest challenge – keeping to the word count.  As valuable as your insights are, I really want to stress how great this piece is!, you also need keep within the boundaries of the assignment.  You’re not penalised here but you could be further on.

An excellent submission and a real pleasure to read.

Please get in touch if you want to discuss this further."

Building a picture of H5P usage and application

Continuing my strategic H5P work, for one of this year's IHAP Digital Learning Strategy objectives, I produced the following report to help build a picture of H5P usage and application across our department, identifying H5P champions, and to support further objectives to increase scaffolded online asynchronous learning in our courses and modules.

Head of Department - "Thanks for this very informative report.  I’ll put it straight on the SLT page and let everyone know its there."

This was planned to be discussed with my line manager, the Head of Department, to plan how we can take the findings forward and promote the report further.  Through a separate one to one meeting with the Principal Lecturer in Paramedicine, in a ad hoc manner, I showed the report which spurred on enthusiastic conversations on it's potential.  He said they would discuss this with the Head to invite me to a future Senior Leadership Team meeting to walkthrough and discuss.  However in my catch up later on the same day with the Head, she also agreed and invited me to attend the SLT meeting on 24 April.

In the meeting on 24 April I shared the original non-anonymised report, which enabled SLT to identify their staff and their practice.  However, I have since anonymised it (below) to share widely across the department through various committee meetings.  The report was very well-received by SLT and we had much insightful discussions, such as confirming the following outcomes:

• 1.  Focus on H5P
• Focus promotion and support on specific content types, interactive learning and presentation of information.
• Plan and promote further my successful and impactful H5P Retreat workshops.
• Discussed the need for conducting more module learning room audits.
• 2.  Scope out training needs on interactive learning tools such as Padlet and underutilised Microsoft Office (curate self-service resources and bespoke workshops).
• Consideration for Principal Lecturers on how they can get lecturers to come to us.  Ensuring accountability through their course and team meetings and one to ones.
• 3.  Start with MSc Nursing - we concluded the meeting by agreeing to meet to discuss the following on 22 May, utilising our exemplar H5P work and NOW web pages:
• Development of an IHAP-specific standardised online asynchronous learning framework to ensure quality
• Think about a standardised NOW template to aid Module leaders
• What we want as a minimum in each module
• What modules should we review first in terms of digital resources